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Some Things Are Better Left Unsaid
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2–4 minutes·
No comments on Some Things Are Better Left UnsaidOlivia Judson, an evolutionary biologist at Imperial College, has written a piece in the New York Times yesterday called Some Things Are Better Left on Mars, where she argues that the risk of infection by Martian lifeforms far outweighs any scientific gain from bringing back rock and soil samples. Given that we know organisms on…
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Ares Express 3
Ares Express Issue 3 is now online – this week’s issue covers a talk I’m giving to the Oxford University Society Society in a fortnight, in addition to a selection of the best threads from the New Mars forums and interesting Mars news from around the Internet.
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Fourth Rock
Instead of watching the Superbowl last night, I ended up catching A Life Less Ordinary, which was assuredly a better experience than seeing American Football and Janet Jackson. It’s a much more quirky comedy than I thought it would be, and could in some ways be seen as a proto-Moulin Rouge; it even has a…
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Ares Express Issue 1
Ares Express – I’ve just finished writing the first issue of a new weekly newsletter at New Mars that will highlight the best threads and discussion in the forums, as well as links to Mars news across the Internet. I’m hoping that the bulk of subsequent issues will consist of submissions from forum members.
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Who wants the Gobi Desert?
Bruce Sterling, SF writer, has pointed out that the Gobi Desert is far more hospitable than Mars, so before we ever settle Mars we’ll have settled the Gobi Desert (i.e. not any time soon). He also points out that by the time we have the ability to terraform Mars, we’ll be doing much more interesting…
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The Most Accurate Navigation In History
How to hit a bullseye on Mars – an article about the lengths the navigators for the current NASA Mars missions had to go to land the Spirit Rover right on target, entering the Martian atmosphere within 200m of the desired point (via MetaFilter).
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The Road to Mars is Paved with Money
I haven’t been following the Beagle 2 Mars Mission anywhere near as much as I ‘ought’ to be, but I loved this quote from the lead scientist of the project, Colin Pillinger. Interviewer: What happens if you find life on Mars? Prof. Colin Pillinger: I’ll find it a lot easier to get funding for the…
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Crescent skies
There’s something undeniably romantic about a crescent moon in the clear evening sky, hovering over the rooftops in a scene straight from the cover of a ’50s ‘Amazing Stories’ magazine. Usually they have more than one moon, and the sky is pink, and the rooftops are either a barren wasteland or soaring, spiralling towers, but…
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Spheres
I try to make a point of just reading, not posting to, Star Trek messageboards; there’s some fun stuff that gets said there but I just don’t feel like I have the time or patience to get involved. However, after I watched the latest Enterprise episode (Anomaly) – which was unusually entertaining and well done,…
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What Galileo Saw
What Galileo Saw – the New Yorker has a compelling account of the legacy of NASA’s Galileo deep space probe. The article describes the almost fatal problem the probe encountered in transit and the heroic effort of NASA scientists to try and salvage the mission, as well as the unparalleled discoveries it made at Jupiter.
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